1. Field of Invention
The invention disclosed and claimed relates to a method for optimized visual presentation of key performance indicators of the current status of a business enterprise which provides goods or services for profit, which said enterprise includes one or more profit centers each of which profit centers has a plurality of discrete projects. In such business it is highly advantageous to regularly monitor the current status of said profit centers and projects, in relation to other parts or the whole of the business, to ascertain whether said profit centers and projects are currently on track to make a profit for the business when completed. More particularly, the invention relates to use of computer means to display squarified tree maps visually representing one or more levels of hierarchal project and profit center data in a manner which particularly appeals to the perceptive/intuitive, rather than cognitive/interpretive, processes of the human mind, thus enables users, such as managers of the business, to instantaneously assess the relative importance of large amounts of business data and thereby rapidly ascertain if and where managerial attention might be best focused. The invention also relates to use of computer means to assist users view and examine, by means also appealing to the perceptive/intuitive processes of the human mind, data underlying that first visually presented by squarified tree map.
2. Description of Related Art
Today, the volume and speed of data available for use by a business manager to make decisions has and continues to increase. Advances in computers, networks, and modern database systems have enabled businesses to rapidly collect larger amounts of data about their operations than ever before. Unfortunately the collection of larger and larger amounts of data, with more and more speed, can result in a paradox, namely the complexity and speed of the data can and does slow the ability of managers to read, comprehend and react to said data. In short, the volume and speed at which data collection is currently collected and made available can, and often does, exceed the human minds ability to comprehend and react appropriately to the data. As volume and speed of data collection grows the situation (essentially, “too much for the human mind to rapidly comprehend and react appropriately”) may only grow worse. Accordingly managers need tools to help them assess financially related business data in a meaningful, expedient manner in order to assess the relative importance of how various aspects of the business are performing so they may more rapidly respond appropriately to said business data.
Digital computing means have been used to mitigate some of the problem. Many businesses use database software means to store financial data concerning their operations in an electronic, computer read format. Usually said software will have the capacity to at least somewhat organize the data and present same in the form of a “spreadsheet” (either printed or displayed on one or more computer displays) of alpha-numeric characters. While no doubt some organization of data and presentation of somewhat organized data by spreadsheet of alpha-numeric characters represents an improvement over attempting to comprehend and react to large amounts of unorganized data presented in various forms, such means leaves much to be desired. In business of any complexity, spreadsheets of its data can be lengthy, related data can be separated by many pages, and reading and comprehension of alpha-numeric characters requires utilization of the cognitive/interpretive functions of the human brain, which are much slower than the perceptive/intuitive functions of the human brain. Accordingly comprehension and appropriate reaction to data presented in the form of spreadsheet containing alpha-numeric characters can be undesirably difficult (if not impossible) and slow.
Accordingly, in attempt to improve a users ability to comprehend financial data relevant to operations of a business, database programs were developed which have the capability of displaying data as lines, bars, virtual “three dimensional” blocks and/or as pie charts. While these types of presentations improve the users ability to comprehend a larger amount of data, in a shorter period of time, as compared to pages of alpha-numeric characters, they too leave room for much improvement. A line or a bar contains only one level of hierarchal data. Use of many lines to display a second level of hierarchal data can become confusing. If substantial amount of data is to be displayed by line or bar chart a choice must be made as to either loss of resolution (if the data is displayed on one page there is inadequate separation of discrete data from display of adjacent data) or use multiple pages to display the data (and thereby at least partially lose the comparative relevance of discrete data on one page from other discrete data on other pages).
Pie charts have been tried to improve ability of users to comprehend and react to business data, but represent little, if any improvement over line and bar charts. Pie charts are effectively bar charts, presented around a common point rather than along a common line. Since the length of all the bars in a pie chart is the radius of the pie, that dimension become unavailable for display of comparative relevance of discrete “slices” of the “pie”. Effectively relative size of a discrete unit of data becomes a portion of the circumference of a circle rather than an length of height of a line or length of a bar and may actually be less readable and comprehensible than line or bar charts.
By contrast the invention disclosed and claim herein utilizes computer means to visually display such key indications of the financial health of a business having one or more goods or service producing profits centers, each of which profit centers, may have one or more projects in a manner, namely that of squarified tree maps, each of which may have a plurality of major-minor (sometimes called parent-child nodes), which is particularly well received by the near instantaneous, perceptive/intuitive processes of the human mind; thereby supporting rapid managerial decision making. In addition the nodes of the display may be provided with various “mouse over” or “hot linked” functions which change the characteristics of the display and/or reveal various levels of underlying hierarchal underlying data, for further analysis as may be desired to support managerial decision making. While the use of squarified tree maps to present certain types of financial data (such as segments of the stock market) is known, such maps have not been previously used as disclosed and claimed herein.